What's the absolute opposite of India?
I will find it in a couple of hours. In Doha, the capital of Qatar. One of the richest countries in the world. With the largest natural gas reserves in the world. Rich. Infinitely rich.
Farewell
But I'm still here, in Delhi, the TukTuk to the metro station is just starting to pick up speed, it's early in the morning. I still can't imagine that in a few hours I will face the absolute opposite of all this.
Meanwhile this has become the daily main course: noise, heat, stench, millions of people. In other words - life.
What awaits me will be different. Very much different. So one last look, but the mind is already traveling, has already said goodbye yesterday and the day before. If I have been - at least a little bit - part of this crazy world, then I'm not any longer.
The first step into the air-conditioned, almost clinically clean metro station, which looks more like in London or New York, is a farewell to everything that has accompanied me during the past 5 weeks. A low humming announces the arrival of the train, elegantly and expensively dressed gentlemen with briefcases and a ponderous expression on their faces enter, take out their tablets or notebooks from their bags and start working.
It all seems very familiar to me.
The last kilometers in India race silently by, we have already entered another world, hermetically sealed from the outside world. I look out the window, I see a stooped figure in a field, a cyclist on a dirt road, a cloud of dust.
And there's suddenly a blue sky. Delhi is covered in a thick blanket of smog day in, day out. You believe in bad weather all the time, in dark clouds. But it is only smog, while a clear blue sky looks down a few kilometers outside the city.
And while India slowly disappears, melancholy and sadness emerge out of nowhere. TI tke a deep breath for the last time. I'll miss it, but I'll be back.
Promise.
Arrival in Doha
A seemingly endlessly long approach over the sea, only a few meters above the water surface, you get the impression that you might catch the fish by hand. The silhouette of the city appears on the horizon, it might also be Manhattan or Shanghai.
The airport, my home for the next 21 hours. This is not going to be a pleasure.
I know my way around here, I know where to buy things, where the overpriced shops are, where I might find the restaurants with food from all over the world. It is a boring, completely sterile place, lifeless despite the many people, cold, repellent, causing an inner chill.
Tour of Doha
But nevertheless - there is apparently a three-hour round trip around Doha, offered by Qatar Air and the Qatar Tourist Office. Of course I'm happy to accept that, with all the waiting times, it's four to five hours, which I can count from the 21.
A very mixed crowd gathers at the corresponding counter, I count at least ten different nationalities, all of them suffering the same fate as me, so to speak, to survive a long stopover in Doha. The guide, as it turns out a Nepalese, greets us, and off we go to the promised land, at least that's what you might call it after the rapture in the next three hours.
It's starting off as expected. Shortly after leaving the airport, the guide points us to a large building nearby, architecturally very boldly designed, including a motorway connection. The private airport of His Majesty, Hamad bin Chalifa Al Thani, Emir of Qatar, Lord over life and death, so just below the Lord God himself.
That is already a first hint of what is in store for us. And so it goes on, from one project to the next, a land of milk and honey for anyone interested in architecture, and it also looks as if entire generations of architects have been allowed to let off steam. Money plays a subordinate role here.
Imitation of Life
An older man sits next to me, Bill from Perth in Australia, we soon get into a discussion, and it turns out that he too has mixed feelings about Doha.
It all looks quite perfect. The sight of the countless towers, skyscrapers, nested buildings, the seamlessly merging green and brown and grey constructions causes many an ah and oh, but still it remains strangely quiet in the bus, as if one is slain by so much ostentatious splendour.
You only notice after a certain time that something is missing - people. Not that it doesn't have any, it's not like India, but it does have people. They just look as if the builders had noticed at the end that something important is lacking, namely a few living creatures to animate the doll's house.
Bill finds it an Imitation of Life and I have to agree with him.
Mosques and other buildings
The explanations of the guide only make sense if you believe in the omnipotence of money. You cannot deny a certain attractiveness of the individual buildings, they declare what they are built for: „Look, we can afford everything. Everything extravagant, everything tasteless, everything surreal. And you pay for it. As you always did …“
You overlook the absurdity of this strange city, which just 50 years ago was an insignificant fishing village. Today the old houses and streets no longer exist, the market has been rebuilt, of course on the basis of the former one, naturally without its charm. Again, this shows the grotesque absence of real life.
Once more - Imitation of Life!
Also the mosques and all the other sacral buildings are new and magnificent, but there is nobody there except us tourists. We feel abandoned on the square in front of the mosque wondering if there are ever believers here.
Perhaps …
And then the evening falls, a thousand lights and lanterns illuminate the city and finally breathe life into it.
And so, after the three hours, we are exhausted and relieved at the same time, and so Bill and I decide to spend the evening together, his departure, however, several hours before mine.
We don't realize how quickly time passes, with all the debates about the Brexit, Donald Trump, the advantages of the Australian rugby team compared to the New Zealand team, the rules of the cricket game which seem to me absolutely incomprehensible, direct democracy (which Bill has never heard of), and so on and so forth, and finally it is midnight, eight hours to go, Bill says goodbye, and it is Saturday ...
Bill disappears through customs, I stay behind and with it the certainty that I will never see him again. That's just the way it is. You get to know each other, feel extremely comfortable in each other's company in a very short time, and are aware the whole time that it is a temporary encounter ...
(Not so) silent room
There is a so-called Silent Room with a kind of deck chair that you can use to bridge the endlessly long night. At one o'clock in the morning there is exactly one unoccupied couch on which I try to find a position that could allow some sleep.
The attempt fails miserably. The chair is not only uncomfortable, the sounds of the twenty or so other stranded people create an acoustic, not too loud, but nerve-wracking backdrop that makes it impossible to find even a single second of sleep.
A gentleman opposite, whom I seriously recommend to use a mask against sleep apnoea in the future, has an extremely refined palette of snoring sounds, interrupted by a repeated gasp for air and all sorts of flanking sounds with which one could scare dogs and small children to death.
Well, I eventually give up, sit down at a table in one of the many restaurants, freezing pitifully despite my turtleneck and fleece jacket. As everywhere in Asia it is customary to adjust the room temperature so low that not only a cold but the acute danger of double-sided pneumonia is imminent. Well then ...
Finally, after several red-hot Black Coffees, the time has come - I have survived the 21 hours. The flight of almost six hours I do not consciously notice, my tiredness is too great for that. The pilot's voice announcing the descent to Zurich Airport finally brings me back to the world of the living. The view outside reveals something unheard of - green meadows, trees, bushes, glittering rivers and brooks. Everything looks so orderly, so proper, so ... different.
Yeah, that must be it. I'm home ...
P.S. Matching Song: Faada Freddy - Reality cuts me like a knife
And here begins another journey ... to South America
